


a clash of queens

by JaguarCello



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, and breath forced out in a groan of pain, and the sickening thud of falling, julie d'aubigny inspired aka my love, street brawling and nails tearing at hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaguarCello/pseuds/JaguarCello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine liked to walk the city at night, when the sun had slid behind the skyscrapers and covered the streets in velvet silence, and most people – who had sense – were asleep. She knew every nook and cranny, every alleyway, every beat of every policeman who patrolled, and she knew how to kill them. She stalked her prey like a lioness (for, she reminded herself every time her father tried to take some of her haul) the lioness did the hunting, and after slitting the purses of the women and the throats of the men, she’d keep what she found for herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a clash of queens

**Author's Note:**

> [I own none of the characters; this is based off the 2012 characterisation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and none of the place names, people or established events mentioned as canon are my intellectual property]

Éponine liked to walk the city at night, when the sun had slid behind the skyscrapers and covered the streets in velvet silence, and most people – who had sense – were asleep. She knew every nook and cranny, every alleyway, every beat of every policeman who patrolled, and she knew how to kill them. She stalked her prey like a lioness (for, she reminded herself every time her father tried to take some of her haul) the lioness did the hunting, and after slitting the purses of the women and the throats of the men, she’d keep what she found for herself.

 She robbed only the rich – only those with flashy car keys, or wallets bulging, or voices like treacle – and she smiled as she did so, and her teeth gleamed white, and sometimes – for those who tried to shout, or protest, or take back their money, her teeth would be the last thing they’d see. It used to bother her, the killing. But then her clothes developed so many holes that she’d had to patch them up with scraps torn from curtains and cushion-covers, and she stopped minding.

 Tonight, the moon was rising, a waxen gibbous that hung balefully in the smoke from the chimneys and from the factory, looming on the edge of the city and pumping poison – or so the propaganda said – into the air. The air itself was yellow, curling along the window-panes of the houses and creeping into their homes. The city was dying, slowly, and the politicians sat back and watched.

 She reached into her pocket and felt for her knife. She’d carved her name along the blade, no longer caring about the police catching her, for she knew how to deal with policemen. Their stomachs had split into smiles before they could scream, and –

 She saw a rich girl, immediately identifiable by the car keys dangling from her hands and the leather boots on her feet. The girl was tall, hair curling down her back, and her legs (pale, and bare, in the moonlight) were long and lean, and her face was a wonder.

 Éponine had stopped caring for wonders, and started caring about the haggard looks on her siblings’ faces when she came home empty-handed, or had been unable to extract the bank details from stock-brokers, or when she spent the night washing the blood from her hands, and so she slipped her knife from her pocket, and slid her thumb up the blade, testing. It was sharp; she imagined slicing through the straps of the bag, or holding it to the perfect white throat of the girl, or carving through tendon and artery, if it came to it. She could kill the girl before she screamed, she knew, and so she stepped forwards.

 Every muscle in her body was taught as she followed the girl, who turned (bizarrely) into an alleyway that stank of piss and stale pizza from the take-away next door.

 “I know you’re following me,” the girl said, and her voice was high and clear and precise, the crisp voice of a girl brought up in privilege. “And I know you have a knife,” she added, and Éponine didn’t let herself curse, but raised an eyebrow.

 “I’m not here to talk,” she answered, and lashed out with her other hand, only to meet the rock-solid arm of the girl, blocking her way; she shrugged it off and lunged for her eyes.

 Éponine had learned to fight in the gutter, scrapping and brawling with those who would try to take her toys or money as soon as she could. Her nails were long and sharp, and she could use them equally well to drive women (or men, if she needed information) into a frenzy, and to scratch at eyes. Her hair was cropped short, so that nobody could grab it, and her movements were scrappy, unpractised. She had grown up literally rolling with the punches, and she moved like a ship in a storm, and her bruises faded fast.

 Even so, she still found herself lying on the floor, head twisted back to expose her neck. Nobody had exposed her throat to the sky for such a long time that she couldn’t catch her breath, and the girl was crouched on her stomach, coiled like a loaded spring.

 “Okay,” the girl said, slowly. “You’re going to go home now. Take my purse, and you’re not going to hurt anybody else tonight. I will know about it, and my father had me trained to fight as soon as he realised I’d be a target for people like you – “

 “People like me?” Éponine asked, narrowing her eyes, and she rolled over sharply, forcing the girl now to submit to her. “Yield,” she insisted softly, and the girl laughed.

 “I’ve slit the throats of people who – “ and the soft laughter came again, and Éponine found herself transfixed at this girl who could laugh in the face of danger; she’d had her down as a gentle dove.

 “I was trained to fence, you know. I grew up in a convent and my father thought boys might trouble me if they saw me – I wasn’t a nun – from the windows. He taught me every way of fighting known to man, including your way,” she half-teased, and rolled them over again, pinning Éponine’s fists above her head.

 “I’m Cosette, and I’m intrigued by you, and I hope I’ve damaged your pride enough to intrigue you,” the girl – Cosette – said, and Éponine was aware at once of the curve of her thighs around her waist, and her long fingers – wickedly stroking her wrists, now, and the glorious glimpse of cleavage she could see from her position –

 “I’m Éponine,” she said, and didn’t wish she’d given a false name. “My family are starving – “

 Cosette stood up suddenly, and Éponine was bereft; she felt strangely naked suddenly, under the scrutiny of this stranger, scrawling something as she was on a scrap of paper.

 “I’ve left your knife over here,” Cosette said merrily, and turned to go, and the air felt twice as heavy once she’d left the alleyway.

 When Éponine had gathered her thoughts – defeat? By a girl so impossibly beautiful she wasn’t sure if it had happened? Cleavage? Fencing? – enough to stand, she found her knife neatly placed beside a purse, and a note, written in eyeliner.

 “Fancy a rematch?” and an address, in the nice part of the city. The writing was slanted and neat, and although Éponine crumpled it up and shoved it into her pocket, next to her knife and the money that would buy food for two weeks, she retrieved it guilty later.

 That night, she dreamed of the clash of foils in courtyards, and the singing of the metal as they met, and of long hair and eyelashes and creamy skin that smelt of expensive body lotion.

 


End file.
